Lily was startled by Rose's sudden hostility.

"No! Rose, it's a misunderstanding!" Lily tried to calm her down.

"The only misunderstanding will be when I put my fist in her wrinkly face," Rose growled.

Lily threw herself at Rose, tightly hugging her side.

"It was happy tears! Happy!" Lily attempted to reason with the angry dragon. "I finally got glyph ink! I drew my first spell!"

Lily pushed against her, trying to stop her from advancing into the building. Then, things suddenly seemed to be getting hotter, and Lily let out a yelp and flinched backward as if she'd touched an open flame.

Witnessing Lily's abrupt withdrawal and hearing her yelp was enough to snap Rose out of it.

"Lily! Are you okay?" Rose exclaimed as she looked towards the small bunny with concern.

"You were just... Really hot! It felt like a stove..." Lily answered, hesitantly retreating a little more.

That was enough to immediately dispel any remaining anger, and she rapidly cooled down mentally and physically.

"Did you say you got the ink?" Rose asked. "And you drew your first glyph!?"

"Yes!" Lily's voice was filled with infectious excitement. "I finally got the ink and drew my first glyph!"

Now that Rose had stopped her advance and cooled down, Lily took the time to pull out the bottle stored safely in her basket. She gleefully showed it off.

"It's not much, only one bottle, but she's promised to make more!" Lily said happily. "I wish you could have seen it, Rose! It was so magical. I mean, I was fixing up the horrible glyph she butchered, and I really wanted to make a star spell or something dazzling, but it worked! I changed the shape from a sphere to a pyramid and-"

"Woah! Calm down!" Rose said, interrupting the talkative bunny before she passed out. "And that's wonderful news!"

"It is. I can finally start doing magic!" Lily said proudly. "But why were you so on edge? You jumped straight to murderous rage in an instant… And that heat?"

Rose sighed, looking a bit embarrassed. "It's definitely becoming a bit of an issue ever since my awakening…"

"The heat especially is really concerning," Lily replied.

"I ran into a dead end trying to get any of the other shops to cooperate. It seems like Camilla really is the best in the city. So, I was already in a bad mood, considering I didn't want to be the bearer of bad news. Then, the thought of you also having troubles just… Combined and everything got out of hand."

"I see…" Lily mumbled before grabbing Rose's hand tightly, confident she had gotten her heat under control. "Don't worry so much, Rose! We'll get through this."

Rose gave a happy smile. With the situation successfully defused, they started their journey home.

***

When Lily finally returned to her room, she rushed to tell Arakil the good news. She pulled the book out from under the mattress and placed it carefully on her desk.

"Arakil! I got some glyph ink! I drew my first glyph!" Lily declared excitedly.

Her elation was so great that she nearly spilled her normal ink when she supplied it for Arakil to respond.

[That's marvelous news! I presume Camilla was indeed holding out on you, and providing an ultimatum forced her to show her hand?]

Lily nodded and began retelling the events. At the same time, she mentioned the glyph she drew, the unknown sigil, and Camilla's new proposition.

[I do think you should consider taking her up on that offer. I know you detest the idea of drawing glyphs that you won't be able to utilize yourself, in addition to their origin in blood. However, it will be very good practice for you.

Also, I believe your assessment is correct. That was a sigil that regulates temperature. It is a common sigil when working with crests such as Fire, but I kept it from you as a safety concern. However, I must remove that restriction if you intend to craft glyphs for alchemical purposes.

Also, I'm very proud of you for restraining yourself. You could have drawn and done the activation sigil yourself, but you held back. Now that we have glyph ink, we must cover activation sigils.

However, I will point out that even without an activation sigil or direct Mana input, you should be able to activate a glyph by placing a drop of glyph ink on the center crest or, in the case of an inscription, on the primary glyph's crest.]

"That would have really been useful to know…" Lily mumbled, feeling a little sad that she didn't get to activate the glyph herself. "Still… I'm glad I don't need to draw an activation sigil for everything."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

[I think you may live to regret those words when you see how useful activation sigils can be. The ones I put on the two inscriptions I gave you were relatively crude, activating on breaking the circle, but some can be activated under very convenient conditions.]

Lily tilted her head curiously. "Really? Can you give me some examples?"

[One of my favorite triggers is when a glyph is placed against a surface, whether a person or object and activates from the applied pressure and contact. Glyphs that use it are often nicknamed 'talismans.' Of course, you could get even deeper into that, such as glyphs for an air spell that activates when it becomes wet. It's all about thinking of suitable situations.]

"I really like the sound of the talisman one!" Lily said happily. "If I used it with a shield glyph, then it's almost like I'm putting on paper armor!"

[I thought that one might please you. It is a favorite of many spellcasters, and paper armor is an apt comparison.]

"So, are you interested in Camilla's book at all? I don't know how useful it will be if you already know the temperature sigil…"

[While it might not provide us with new knowledge, it will certainly be a good reference to the current level of glyph knowledge. I suspect it might have deteriorated over time, but the possibility of some hidden gem or new discovery is certainly plausible. That and reading it might give you some ideas on how to make glyph combinations if you critically analyze the provided examples.]

Lily nodded.

Over the next thirty minutes, Lily copied out the temperature sigil for Arakil to confirm it was the same as he had known it in the past, and to see if there was not a more suitable one. It did turn out to be the same, so instead, Arakil provided Lily with a reference on how to configure it to either raise or lower the temperature of the connected Fire crest.

"What's stopping me from just setting the temperature sigil incredibly low?" Lily asked. "Could I create a cold flame that way?"

[Good question! Nothing except crest compatibility and Mana abundance prevents you from doing that. There is a remarkable form of magic called coldfire, which burns and freezes adversaries. However, if you merely wanted to create frigid temperatures, you'd be much better off using an Ice crest.]

"That's so incredible!" Lily said, eyes sparkling.

[In the meantime, we should work on your temperature and time-limit sigils. They will be important in completing your tasks safely and adequately for Camilla. Once you have those mastered, we can move on to various activation sigils that could aid in that task, especially if she uses blood ink and it's as potent as you indicated.]

"What do you mean? How would giving Camilla activation sigils help her?" Lily asked curiously. She couldn't see why the old woman needed it when she could just use her Mana.

[Well, activation sigils can work both ways. There is a sigil that behaves like a switch, so you can turn the glyph on and off when required. However, you'll already partially accomplish this using a time-limit sigil.

For example, if Camilla wants the flame to burn for 2 minutes, but her blood ink is potent enough for 10 minutes, she could activate the glyph 5 times before it's depleted.]

"No… Not math!" Lily groaned. Arakil had informed her it would someday become important, and she had hoped it would still be further away. "But… That switch sigil definitely sounds cool… Why don't we start with that?"

[It's a rather advanced sigil, so I'd rather you focus on what's important for now. However, I'd also not like us to show Camilla all our cards yet. It might sour things if you start right out of the gate showing her such amazing glyphs.]

"Oh, okay…" Lily mumbled, not really understanding.

[I promise I will teach it to you. It would certainly be helpful if you wanted to recreate a lamp or similar. Until we can get you your own Mana, we must be quite creative with activating glyphs. But for now, using a drop of ink on the crest is enough, and I'll teach you the talisman sigil in a day or two.]

Lily nodded happily. She was so eager to learn more.

Arakil drew the rest of the sigils for Lily to study, and then all that remained was attempting to determine how efficacious the glyph ink would be. This meant that Lily had the opportunity to draw her second-ever real glyph!

"I wonder what I should draw…" Lily mumbled. Her first glyph was one for Camilla and to prove herself, but now she wanted one entirely for herself.

Replacing her lost shield glyph was one idea that immediately sprung to mind, but she was actively avoiding leaving the city for now, so it wasn't needed. Plus, she wanted to save that for when she learned to make it a talisman.

Paper armor! She giggled to herself.

Lily took stock of her other known crests: Light, Water, and Fire. She knew she'd be doing lots of Fire crests for Camilla, so that meant either Light or Water.

My only idea for Water would be to make a glyph that makes bathwater… While I like the idea, I don't want my second-ever glyph to be used for creating a bath!

Perhaps it was a little wasteful, but she decided to make a glyph using the Light crest and make it purely decorative. It would be fun for herself, allow Arakil to sense the amount of Mana, and let Lily show it off to Rose.

She voiced her idea to Arakil, and he saw no fault in her reasoning. Lily immediately began to sketch out her idea quickly in pencil before she moved to the real thing. She wanted to make a fantastical array of shaped, glowing lights, trying her best to reimagine the beautiful scenery that Arakil had once created for her.

Unfortunately, Lily was limited to only using one glyph and not a full inscription like Arakil, so it would no doubt be inferior to the majestic scene of that fateful night. But still, she wanted to do it, even if it was a barebones imitation.

She could combine multiple shaping sigils together to create a complex shape. Instead, Lily used a splitting sigil that evenly divided the resulting effect based on how many branches you drew in the sigil. That way, she could assign each split branch a different shape.

Lily went with the absolute maximum splits she could reasonably draw - five - and assigned a sphere, two stars, a diamond, and finally, a polyhedron. Likewise, she assigned each shape a different color, one of the first sigils Arakil taught her when he first introduced the Light crest.

Lily took some time deciding what five colors she wanted to assign to each branch of the glyph to maximize the visual appeal. Sadly, she hadn't studied something like color theory, so she stuck mostly to bright colors that she was fond of. However, she ensured the two stars were red and pink, respectively. She giggled to herself as she plotted.

The final step was adding a bit of distance and movement to the shapes, although she gave them all barebones movement to ensure some semblance of simplicity.

When it was finally done, she asked Arakil if this would work. Nervous that she'd made a mistake somewhere.

[I see no issues in this draft. Just be warned that it might only manifest briefly with five splits, depending on how effective the ink is.]

Lily was fine with that. Even if it was a mere few seconds, she would be happy. She was giggling with glee when Arakil continued writing.

[However, if I can make one suggestion...]

Lily held her breath. Had she made a mistake?

[You should make the pink star slightly smaller than the red one.]

Lily nearly cried with laughter. She had been so worried, and instead, Arakil had seen right through her.

"Good idea! Thanks, Arakil!" Lily said cheerfully.